Introduction
Cameron Croft:
Welcome, everybody. Thank you for joining us on our series, Saving Money in Oil and Gas Operations. This episode is specific to asset integrity and repairs. We created this series to allow subject matter experts to come on and just share their knowledge with the industry, oil, and gas industry so that way we can increase our learning curve and make sure that we get through this thing.
Staying in the know. A little bit of housekeeping before we get started. If you have any questions if you’re new to Zoom, there is a question and answer box that you can be typing in questions. We’ll be trying to answer those questions as we go through the presentation, but we will have a Q&A section at the end. If you have any questions for Jessie that you want to go through, we’ll be answering them at the end as well.
A lot of you all might be working from home, so kids might walk in, power goes out, you might have to take a phone call. Don’t worry about everything. What we’ll do is we’ll download this video and then re-upload it to our YouTube channel and our blog so that way you can be looking at it afterwards.
Now for meeting the speakers. My name is Cameron Croft. I am Chief Executive Officer of Croft Production Systems, a natural gas processing company. We focus on domestic, and we sell equipment internationally, natural gas processing equipment. I got my engineering degree from the University of Houston along with my master’s, and I’m a Black Belt in Six Sigma. I love data. I love continuous improvement. That’s why I get to talk to people like Jessie who can give me more information to continuously improve. But the real reason for you all to come on today is y’all are wanting to watch Jessie, hearing what he has to say.
Jessie started his career with Maverick Engineering as a design engineer and working on facility designs, gas gathering facilities, infrastructure projects. He worked himself up to division manager. From that he got his PMP and then actually started his consulting company working on civil projects and oil and gas infrastructure facility projects. Doing that over eight to 10 years consulting, he actually went ahead and created his own equipment and pressure vessel manufacturing company. So, taking all those quality knowledge that he had, the experience from that, and now he’s applying it to his own company called Osynergy.
I’ve been working with Jessie for the last 10 years, and he’s a great resource to talk to, to pick up the phone and say, “This is the problem I’m having,” and he’s always there to assist. So, appreciate Jessie actually coming on board with us today and sharing his knowledge.
He created his highlights, and I told him, “Jessie, I need you to come on and talk about how you could save money in oil and gas operations. What would you tell a client?” So he created his topic highlights of operating within equipment design parameters, asset integrity management, repairs, alterations, rerates, and repurpose. These are the big key things that he is focusing on today.
Cameron Croft:
Now, starting it off Jessie, why did you want to be a part of this series?
Jessie:
First of all, thank you for having me. You did a great job putting this sharing platform together. It’s very beneficial, and we learned a lot. Like many, I’ve learned a lot from other people. From their knowledge, from their experience, and for that I’ll be forever grateful. It’s cutting the learning curve a lot. I believe that if one item in this presentation helps somebody save time, save money, or especially save headaches, then I’ve done my part of passing it forward. And that’s really the key thing why I’m doing this.
Cameron Croft:
That’s good. Well, kicking us off on the projects, this is one thing that I asked you is everyone’s trying to save money right now. They’re moving equipment from one location to another location, they’re doing a lot of things and just trying to save assets and save their money rather than having to manufacture anew going into it. You really focused on this, so kind of tell us about what you’re talking about with operating within the design parameters.
Operating Within the Desgin Parameters
Jessie:
This is one of the first steps. If you do a PSM, of any sort, whether HAZOP or even a what-if review, you’ll capture or you’ll evaluate each of these items. But these are some of the big items that I think are very important when you’re selecting or especially relocating equipment. Making sure it’s designed for the right pressure, making sure the material selection is the correct one, that it has the capacity, et cetera. So in the following slides, we’ll go over what happens when you exceed your maximum allowable working pressure, when you exceed your minimum desired metal temperature or your maximum desired metal temperature, when you exceed velocities when you use equipment that was for solar environments and things like that.
Cameron Croft:
Absolutely. And I like this next slide. You have a lot of good tips on here. So yeah, explain this to us.
Jessie:
Let’s talk about over-pressure. The potential impacts of course are anything from stress cracking to deformation to rupture, any asset loss, and of course you could get into human injury or loss and environmental exposure. Some of the quick examples would be even the simplest hydro testing. We’ve heard of individuals for example if you’re using a digital pressure gauge, or just selecting the wrong units. I mean before you know it you say, “Hey, this thing ain’t going up,” and boom, you over-pressure. And then people say, “Hey, nothing happened. It just bolts,” but hey, you already over-stressed the equipment.
Jessie:
Another might be a fader, right? The PSD doesn’t operate and you over pressure it or you have a fire and it just doesn’t have full flow so therefore you over pressure it. That’s one. Exceeding minimum design metal temperature or maximum design metal temperature. Again you have a lot of the losses, right? But you have a potential brittle fracture, you have a stress fracture. Of course, you get into the leaks, the rupture, the acid loss, and human injury loss and environmental exposure.
Jessie:
Now some of the things here are let’s say … I’m in south Texas, right? It’s pretty warm down here but imagine moving the equipment that was designed just for this area moving it up to Canada or North US, right? All of a sudden we focus on pressure most of the time, we really don’t look at the temperature. Imagine something that was designed for 22 degrees and you take it to -50 right? That’s when you’ll have these potential issues.
Jessie:
Likewise, a lot of times we focus on pressure. let’s say all of a sudden you have gas coming in at 150 or 160 degrees well flanges start degrading after 130. So if you don’t watch it, you’re going to basically start operating at a pressure that is no longer 1440. It really needs to be derated as well. That’s when you would want to be careful along the temperature side.
Cameron Croft:
Actually going through this the other day, because we carry a lease fleet. As you said, we had some equipment in Texas and we were actually shipping it to Northern Ohio. And we started kind of looking at it, looking at the plaques. And when you were talking about temperature the other day and getting to know you we actually updated our asset management software now to actually put that in there, so that way it will kind of red flag us of here’s a notification warning before you start doing something in a geographical area. That really helped us out on our lease fleet.
Jessie:
Absolutely that’s great. We’ll move on to exceeding velocities or flow. Then again potential impacts there, you have erosion, metal loss, plugging, leak, asset loss, et cetera. Some examples here would be especially on a multi-phase system would be a lot of times we move equipment and we say, “Hey we operated 10 million on this unit.” We’ll move it to the next well, it does 10 million. However, if you had a lot more liquid on the second unit you potentially are going to have issues. Or if you have a lot of solids like the sand of course, sand plays a big factor. They’ll start eroding and before you know you have a lot of metal loss and you have leaks. That’s just things to really look at as far as the velocity side.
Jessie:
Then we move on to corrosive chemicals or gases. Of course, obviously you’re gonna have corrosion and pitting damage seals on your instruments. And solidification that reacts with your product, and then you potentially have acid and human injury and so forth.
Jessie:
Some examples would be moving equipment from a standard service where there’s no SUS or solid-gas and moving it to a solid gas area. Then you might be okay but it’s gonna start eating your metal, especially if it wasn’t nice compliant, to begin with. Through time you’re gonna have pits, stress cracking and pinholes, and so forth.
Jessie:
In summary, each of these, even when we’re trying to use our existing equipment because we’re trying to save money and not buying new, you really want to consider what am I using this equipment for and what are my risks in using it, and have I checked all my boxes off. That will be one way to make sure you don’t have any more operational costs than your initial by having some incidents occur.
Asset Integrity Management
Cameron Croft:
Well, that kind of leads into the next one, asset integrity management. Which we keep pressurizing or putting pressure on asset management but actually adding the integrity side to it, that’s another thing that we’re adding right now by talking with you, we’re adding to our asset management software right now, is actually the integrity of the equipment, doing routine inspections. I really like what you’re doing here. If you can, kind of in-depth of what you’re talking about are equipment failures.
Jessie:
This is a pretty broad topic, right? We’re trying to just capture a couple of key points here. When we talk about the asset management, you have some potential contributors that are going to really create some issues for your equipment. Again, you have, CO2, chemicals are thrown in there, you have NORM from down, you have operating above design, and we talked about these where there’s pressure, temperature, velocities or just plain simple lack of cleaning and preparation before you store it.
Jessie:
This is tailored a little bit to cover the broad range. You have production equipment, that’s really in the operating constantly, then you have equipment that might be testing or simply that you’re not going to use it, and you’re going to store it. All these are potential things that we really need to consider before we either move them around or store them without proper storage process.
Jessie:
With that, having a good inspection plan is one of the key things. We have our own checklist, and along with a repair plan, capture the details. Doing a monthly review, or if you’re bringing in your equipment on a used basis like well testing, for example, every time you bring it in it’d be good to do your UT fitness checks. Especially in most areas that erosion tends to happen or corrosion tends to build up. Doing an interior and exterior inspection. Sometimes a simple visual inspection does the trick, right?
Then obviously the proper storage. I think this is one of those things that we all tend to oversee. And mainly because we didn’t use the equipment, we’re not using it, just put it in the back. But because you’ll eventually reuse it or sell it or something, you want to make sure you pressure clean it or air dry it, that’d be great. Then especially the cover. We’ve seen it where even the thread sometimes because we didn’t apply any protection like grease or so forth. It just … when pressure testing equipment, and the plug went out.
Cameron Croft:
Now the equipment inspection form, is that something that you have that we can share out to everybody?
Jessie:
Well absolutely.
Cameron Croft:
Okay.
Jessie:
I think I’d definitely be open to that. And it’s a good start. I think we’re all going to have our detailed version of it, but at least to give them … it covers everything from the pressure [inaudible 00:14:08] to the structural and so forth. I think it’ll be useful.
Cameron Croft:
One of our clients wants it for their lease operators that are going out. They just want to give them a quick checklist so that way they could go out there and start kind of running their own integrity system management. If there’s someone … if y’all, whoever’s listening wants to have this equipment inspection form, just reach out to us and we’ll get that form shipped over to y’all.
Jessie:
That’d be great.
Cameron Croft:
The equipment inspection form kind of goes into the next slide. On this one you’re really just kind of labeling out the areas that you look out for or the vocabulary, is that right?
Jessie:
Well these are some of the keys. They’re not all inclusive, but some of the key things, especially if you’re operating. If it’s a vertical it’s always going to be on the higher side or the top side of the unit. If it’s horizontal, it’ll be on the shelf side. But we’ve seen where especially once you introduce some of the solid gasses, they’ll start creating pits along the highest point.
Jessie:
The other area we’ve seen it is where your liquid level sits right, especially if you don’t really do any maintenance to it where you maybe drain it once a month and so forth. We tend to see pitting along that liquid level section.
Jessie:
We’ve seen along nozzle necks, especially if liquid gets trapped in there and it just sits for a long time. It starts heating up that bottom section of it. We’ve seen it especially on the bottom of the hit. We’ve had one project one time where the customer said, “Hey I have a little pinhole, you just need to repair it.” But a pinhole is only a warning, right? There’s something much bigger behind it. And sure enough, this was a pretty good sized vessel. I think it was a 60 plus in diameter, and about 60% of the head was already corroded. A lot of metal loss. It was only basically a [inaudible 00:16:17] is going to cost an exposure.
Jessie:
Then on the external side, it was really similar to a few things. We’ve seen where if you allow a leak, a gasket to leak and you say, “Oh no big deal, it’s just leaking a little bit,” we’ve seen it where it starts eating the flange. What that’s going to cause is either you’re going to have to reface the flange or replace it, which is money you really don’t need to be spending on.
Jessie:
On insulated areas, we’ve seen it where especially on the lower side of condensation or it rains, it just comes to the bottom. We’ve seen where all that starts pitting. All those things we have to monitor, because if it goes below your minimum thickness, then you’re having to basically either put some loading back in there and increase, or rethreading the metal loss, or you’re going to have a weak point. Then your vessel is not good for the design pressure. That’s why it’s important to check integrity management.
Cameron Croft:
So when y’all go in, this next one is this is your form, right? This is when y’all get the equipment or when you’re doing fieldwork, you document everything that’s existing and what’s going on, right?
Jessie:
Yeah. This form has a pre-inspection once we get it and a post-inspection before it goes out. I like it. It’s obviously I’m being biased, but I think anybody else could take advantage of it. If you have some engineering, just by the way what equipment, what do we have about that equipment. It has some quality control, then it gets into the details of inspections. It even includes accessories, right? For anybody like operators who are thinking of using this, it’ll be great because then they could add anything else they want to it.
Cameron Croft:
Yeah because it even goes into page two. Now you’ve got piping and skid [inaudible 00:18:24]. Because what we’re seeing right now is there’s a lot of piping. It seems like the piping is what’s the interconnection between the vessels. Anything rattling from compressors, we’re starting to see a lot of issues with the piping starting to become brittle and breaking down. This would be great for lease operators who go out there and do their own little check-off list and observations. Like you said, the visual observations. You can kind of see a lot what’s going on just on the outside.
Jessie:
Right.
Equipment Repair Tips and Case Studies
Cameron Croft:
Then going into repair saving tips, I really like these because case studies, everyone likes a case study of what to focus on. You’ve got three case studies here. We’ll kick off on the first one, which is … oh, okay. These are three case studies, but on your next one, these are the big areas that a lot of your clients have issues with and the quick repairs before buying something new. Can you explain this?
Jessie:
Right. So far we’ve discussed how to prevent stuff. The first two were obviously about how do we prevent from getting to a repair. But if all that was done or now we’re at a point where we have to do a repair, then we’ve kind of picked some of the top tips that we’ve used or we look for when we’re having to look at a repair and how we save money while still meeting all the co-requirements. This is about repair-saving tips.
Jessie:
On a code versus non-code, a lot of times especially in the oil field. But a lot of times we go higher pressures and we say, “No, but I want a API flange on.” Well really doesn’t consider or doesn’t take into any API materials. That means that you basically could replace that flange without having to go through the whole repair process with the AI. I still like to get my AI involved in all of this stuff, but if it’s outside the boundary of what was certified, then technically it’s not part of the code. Right? Then that means you can do some of these repairs. And that is a … you could save on replacing something without waiting on somebody. You can get it up and running quicker, so this is definitely a cost-saving tip.
Jessie:
On routine repairs, the NBIC code, the repair code allows you to do certain things. One of them is we do repairs. An example would be let’s say you have metal loss. You could reweld that area if it’s 25% of the thickness or up to about half-inch without it being a full repair. You can your AI and you’re able to get their acknowledgment on this and their approval. But what that would do is obviously same you time and money on having to bring the AI or having to wait until he shows up and you losing time and production. That’s where this tip could come in handy. And we’ve applied it several times. It’s great, especially we have great AI that works well for us, and I’m sure everybody else does too. But I really would consider this one as well. That’s one of those cost-saving tips.
Jessie:
Now, this is one of my favorite ones, because we all hate to do this. But pre-heat risk, post-heat treat. Especially if the pressure vessel was not impacted. If it was, then there are other requirements. You can still do it, but let’s just keep it simple. If it wasn’t impact tested, then you’re able to pre-heat and do a post-heat treatment. What would that do? Basically you can do all the repairs, get your AI to review it and all that. But the big savings is you don’t have to take it out to the stress relieving oven or in my case I don’t have one, so I have to ship it to the next town. Having to wait until it gets back before you do all that process. If it takes you two days to do that, you already saved it here. If you’re doing it in the field, you already saved a tremendous … imagine having to tower or contact tower and having to take an hour down instead of doing the field repair, pre-heating in the AI to all that. You can see how this one can save a tremendous amount of money if you don’t have to send it in and get it stress relieved.
Jessie:
Then the last one is the shop versus the field. We like to use a rule of thumb, probably really anything over 36 you should probably consider doing it in the field. But you do that to weigh in any other considerations, the bulkiness, the size, can you afford to send it in or not. Doing it in the field is going to cost you more money as far as the repair service side. But what you will save is going to be in the removal, the transportation, getting it back, reinstalling it. All of that takes a lot of time and a lot of money, right? We kind of … Doing something in the field would justify the cost just by time-saving alone.
Jessie:
These are some of the four top tips that you could apply and save in a repair.
Cameron Croft:
Now that’s awesome. I really like these tips. Then you’re kind of reiterating with them on your first … you still got three case studies. The first one was the separator nozzle repair. This goes back into what you wee talking about of … actually we can go over to the first picture. Explain to us what’s going on here.
Jessie:
Here’s an example. What happened here was this is from a separator to a compressor. Now the problem here was the connecting piping was in a bind basically, it was put in a bind on this nozzle. Through the vibration and the bindin here started cracking.
Jessie:
And if you click the next one you’ll see that the whole extent of this repair. It really covers a pretty good area. What we did here was basically we had to gouge it out, checked everything out, then re-welded, inspecting internals for penetration, the outside, then of course you go through the process of hydro testing and so forth.
Jessie:
What I like about this particular project is we recommended a few things. One of the key things was it’s in your best interest to remove the existing spool piece, refabricate it or adjust it so that there’s no stress on the end of the nozzle. And I think we did this project probably three years ago or four. We hadn’t heard back, so evidently what they did is prevented this thing for having to come back and another repair.
Jessie:
The nice thing about this is planning, like anything, is the key. The more you plan out, the more you save. This was done in coordination with the compressor company to make sure that it was on a PM. I think this was done on a PM. Really there was no loss of production.
Cameron Croft:
What was the turnaround on this project?
Jessie:
Well, when we see this one was done in the shop. Let’s say we received it one afternoon, then by the next day we had already done all the coordination with our AI so had to be present. The next day it was done, the AI was present and hydro tested. So basically two days, two full days.
Cameron Croft:
So just proper planning, compressor company got with you, said we’re having our PM shut down at this time. We’re shipping this vessel to you. It was a quick domino effect, you got everyone in line so that way it was quick turnaround. So just having proper preparation for it was key to that.
Jessie:
Correct.
Cameron Croft:
Case study, this is your line heater repair, so this is a metal loss due to erosion. Let me go to the picture. Yeah, explain to us what’s going on here.
Jessie:
Well this is a clear indication of erosion. This was a combination of more volume and sand. And every time I see it, it just blows my mind how easy it can cut the steel. Something that’s so strong, but when you have erosion it’s very easy to go through it.
Jessie:
What happened here is they had a lot more flow and they had sand and it cut through the 180s basically in the line heater. One of the things we looked at is if you have that one, because they already had a pinhole, it was already leaking. If that one had a leak, then possibly the others, especially on the upstream side, it had also metal loss as high. I recommended they let us check them all, so we did.
Jessie:
What you start seeing here is we end up replacing at least two of the 180s. Then what that did for the customers obviously saved them time. Sooner or later if we would have just done the repair that they requested, they would have come back. Because the other one had already probably only a quarter of an inch to a half inch left in it. Sooner or later that one was going to come back and we would have had to repair it.
Jessie:
In this particular case, the communication we had, the planning definitely helped in getting this thing fixed the first time instead of having to send it back then have to repair it.
Cameron Croft:
What I liked about what you just said is you had a pinhole leak, you’re doing your job so your scope of work is fix that pinhole leak. But because you like partnerships and you like figuring out what’s going on, you said if it’s happening here it’s going to be happening in all of these other areas. You’re recommending it to the client and saying at this point we already have it in the shop, it’s already broken down, let’s just replace all the areas of high concern, lower your risk of having it come back, then of course with that logic they said yes, go ahead and just do all of it. That’s a good partnership. That’s one of the things that I do stress to people is when they’re working with their vendors to have that open communication partnership, because that’s what you want. At the end of the year when you’re doing your taxes with a CPA, you really want them to say, “Don’t do these things. Don’t just sign off on the shipment to the government.” You want that partnership. That’s fantastic.
Cameron Croft:
Your case study number three was a glycol contactor repair. I did have a picture on there. But this is the picture. This is from the hat tray looking at it, right?
Jessie:
Yes. This is looking from the top looking down at the hat tray.
Cameron Croft:
Okay.
Jessie:
Unlike any of the other repairs here, they all had to do with a process, whether it was overdoing something or the flow. This in particular was actually manufacturing related. The well did not penetrate to the walls properly, so therefore once liquid got behind the well it was just a matter of time before it was going to leak.
Jessie:
There was no full penetration, so once it got right behind it, it went right through the hat tray. This particular one here, what we had to do, and again communication, timing is very essential. The customer said I can take the whole hat tray out because we want to also inspect other things and so forth because now we’re not 100% sure. What we did is we took it out, inspected all the other areas that were fine. And when we put the hat tray back, we did a full penetration weld. If they would have done that at the beginning, they probably would have avoided this to be honest with you, because it would have been really tough. Unless of course the welding wasn’t done properly.
Cameron Croft:
Right.
Jessie:
But we did a full penetration weld and added a little bit of extra to make sure this hat tray would not have any issues in the future.
Jessie:
This was a little complex too because it was an existing contact tower, so we needed to make sure once we cut it and aligned it back together, you’re talking about trying to be within an eighth of tolerance to make sure when they put it back in service they weren’t going to have any issues installing the rest of the piping and connections.
Jessie:
Here we go, you’re talking about cost savings. We talked about what we did. We inspected other components. That saved them money from having to bring it back in the future, and then one of the key things here is all the savings really in the planning and the turnaround. I think this one was out within a week, only because this one did hae to go through the whole process of x-rays and inspecting other internal areas.
Cameron Croft:
That’s good. Those are the case studies for that. Your next section was the repurpose, alterations and rerates. And right now I’m glad you did this, because apparently every time I talk to you I’m getting rerates and repurpose backwards. I’m glad you put the vocabulary here for us. Go ahead and explain to us, what do you mean by alterations and rerates?
Jessie:
So far of course we did the prevention, we did the repairs, now we’re saying I’ve got this equipment, can I do anything else with it? Instead of just saying, “Hey, this is a separator, that’s all this is good for,” no, we like to think outside the box. How can we reuse this or modify it, et cetera.
Jessie:
When we talk about an alteration, it’s basically modifying an existing equipment to improve either efficiency, customer requirement, adding additional process ports, et cetera. When we talk about rerates, it’s basically changing an existing equipment condition, whether it’s lowering the pressure, sometimes it depends on how it was designed you might be able to increase it a little bit. Sometimes it’s maximizing the temperature. Ideally you like to design equipment to be maximized, but it’s not always the case. You can always look into it and see if you could do some rerates. That way you could take advantage of what you have.
Jessie:
Now the repurpose works in combination probably, alteration. And that’s basically converting anything you do have. Let’s say you have a contact tower that is not really functioning anymore, and you don’t want to go through replacing the trays but you could convert it into a pack tower. That would be one way to repurpose it. If you have a two-phase separator and you say I need a three-phase, you could convert it into a three-phase, that would be another way to repurpose that. Sometimes just saying, “Hey, you know what? I don’t operate at [inaudible 00:35:18] anymore, so even though I lost metal on my pressure vessel, can I derate it to a lower pressure and still not have to replace it?” And you can. That’s the repurpose side. Just thinking outside how can I use it for something else that it wasn’t intended for. Those are the three things to consider in this step.
Cameron Croft:
Wow that’s good. Everyone is trying to save money with what they have. If you can just do an alteration, rerate, repurpose and use what you have and only spend 20% to 30%, 40% rather than buying new, I think everyone would be pushing on that.
Cameron Croft:
You have three case studies also explaining some examples of what you’re talking about here, which is great because it’s good affirmation. Jumping into the first case study, let me go in. Repurpose and alteration, so it’s a combination of two out of the three. It’s a sand separator, traditional then you made it into cyclonic conversion. Mostly because improving separation efficiency. Did this come from the client or did you work with the client in saying, “Do you have something that we can convert it for you?”
Jessie:
Well what happened in this particular one is the cyclonic conversion came into a pretty big demand over the past couple years. Up until about probably four or five years, everything was traditional sand traps. Then the cyclonic does give you a better separation. I think it goes even up to 98%. A lot of it has to do with the operating side. But this was one of those that the customer said, “Hey is there any way I got these sand traps? I’m going to use them, I can use them because they don’t want traditional. Do we have any options?”
Jessie:
This is one of those that we say, “Hey, we’ll have to remove the head so we can see what you have internally, then we could repurpose it, gut it out.” Because they had a couple of diverters and things like that inside. We gutted it out then applied our cyclonic I guess inlet divides to make it cyclonic, modified the nozzle, added a new nozzle. The cyclonic because you have to really make it a true cyclonic. There’s other ways to design it, but you see here basically it’s at the very end. It requires a lot more metal and so forth.
Jessie:
But what this did, this obviously we repurposed a piece of equipment that the customer had. And their customer was basically requesting a cyclonic, right? Here we’ll go into some of the benefits that we did here, was we gutted everything out. This is the end of it, but basically you have a new vessel, a new sand trap in this case. The benefit here was obviously two big things. One was cost. We probably saved them, or they saved in conjunction about 60% of the cost. Then at that time, it was taking six weeks just to get materials into the building. So at least they saved six weeks of time to where they could actually start producing money. Instead of waiting for something, they actually took something they had and would convert it into something that was producing revenue in a lot shorter time.
Cameron Croft:
Yeah absolutely. Your case study number two. Again, it’s two out of the three. You have repurpose and alteration. Test separator extension. I really like this one because I actually have a client currently that is looking for something like this. You added liquid capacity and settling time. This is their existing equipment, is that right?
Jessie:
That’s correct.
Cameron Croft:
So this-
Jessie:
Basically they had some production separators. I think these were really more test separators. They were test separators and they were like, “What can I do with these?” They were looking at ordering the larger separator to meet the customer requirements, then go through a process and understanding that they had these available. We recommended the alternative of extending these in lieu of going to a larger vessel.
Cameron Croft:
Yeah, actually … and that’s what you did here. Is that added another five feet or so to that?
Jessie:
That’s exactly right. Basically instead of 36 by 10, we converted it into a 36 by 15.
Cameron Croft:
That’s awesome.
Jessie:
This one is even greater. We probably saved 75% of a new one in this case. Then the time, it was at least six weeks of savings. Basically by the time they brought it in, we were already preparing that separator. By the time we got the shell in, we were ready to put it together, all the modifications. We did some improvement internally to it as well. Overall this is what … if we run now, especially with the base time, where we’re trying to save money on anything we have to do, these are things we really would want to look at is repurposing some of your equipment.
Cameron Croft:
Absolutely. And your case study number three was mostly focusing on alteration. Inlet separator vane pack, added gas capacity and separation efficiency. Let me go to the picture right quick. Explain to us what’s going on.
Jessie:
Sure. I like the first two. The first two were done in the shop. This particular one was actually done in the field. What you’re seeing here is more of a shop picture. But basically this was the standard design. Their gas requirements. Then down the road what happened is they started increasing the required capacity. Instead of trying to modify and do a new vessel and all that kind of stuff, what we did is we added a vane pack to allow them to have that required separation. And therefore this was done in the field.
Jessie:
One of the key things to do anything in the field, especially when you’re driving to let’s say Midland or any other places, preparation right? We already had everything cut out, all the materials were here, it was prefab. So by the time we did go to the field to do the job, it took us probably longer to get there and come back than it did to do the job. I think in one day we already had installed it and it was up and running basically.
Cameron Croft:
That’s awesome. So a field repair, you saved 80% on this one because it reduced transportation … oh, because you did it in the field.
Jessie:
This is one of those it was a larger unit, 72 inch by 20 and it was already piped up. This was easily around 80% by the time you consider having to load it and transform it. And it was a wide load, so all those things come into effect. Really considering doing something in the field plays a big role. [inaudible 00:43:20] other factors, whether you want to look at safety, hazards. You outweigh risk basically. But this one, even the turnaround. By the time they would have loaded and brought it over, we would have lost at least two weeks. So this is one of those key things that you could easily implement in the field and be up and running a lot quicker, and therefore your production is not shutting down.
Cameron Croft:
Yeah. I know this is one of the last slides, but from this presentation what I’m getting is everyone is tracking what they have. They’re trying to live with what they have rather than no one is really wanting to invest money right now just with the market as it is. Usually in an election year, everyone is already kind of cautious. When you’ve got oil and gas prices being hampered by COVID, you’ve got election going on, you’ve got protests going on, everyone is kind of … let’s just stay at par.
Cameron Croft:
Then what I like about what you’re doing here is everyone has to maintain their assets. But now they’re moving it from one location to another or parameters change, oil and gas wells, life changes, decrease in volume, H2S might increase, whatever it may be. But you’re saying not only just have it out there, but you can make alterations to the existing equipment to make things work. So that’s … when we have clients coming out at Croft, we’re going to kind of put that in our head. Because we do a lot of simulations of flow simulations, composition of gas, this is what you’re needing. But that might be the one follow up question that we’ll have with our clients now is what existing equipment do you have that can match this, or like you said [inaudible 00:45:00] to structured to packed, changing out certain things, going from the existing [inaudible 00:45:07] to a vane. You could definitely … you can meet the specs that you need just by altering existing equipment.
Cameron Croft:
Right now do you get a lot of phone calls, people asking those type of things?
Jessie:
That seems to be the general consensus right now is used equipment and either used equipment in this case, for those customers what we do know is more along what we’re proposing. Anything you have right now, put it to use. Whether it’s repurposing to something else or just getting it to work. You still can use that equipment in the future.
Conclusion/ Q&A
Cameron Croft:
All right. We’ve got a Q and A section at the end. But I want to go through some quick messages right now. We do have some upcoming webinars. We’re talking about flow services on LACT units and meter runs. Chris Crow with Burner Management and Maintenance, then my own director of engineering, Chris Smithson who’s going to be talking about JTs and fuel gas composition.
Cameron Croft:
If you’re on the webinar today, we have your information but please reach out to us if you want a PDH credit shipped over to you. Reach out to Tori or you can reach out to me on LinkedIn saying yes I want one. If you’re interested in being a webinar speaker or know of someone who would be a good fit, please reach out to us. That way we can get the information and start sharing this information more.
Cameron Croft:
The email below, [email protected] should be the main contact to get your information, then I’ll start working with them to get them on board. It wasn’t that bad, Jessie, right? You’re not that nervous coming on?
Jessie:
Oh well I will say that this often. I think really really we need to give back. Especially if we already learned all this stuff. I’m very grateful to others. Really, I’ve learned more than others and I hope I continue to learn more from others than myself because that means I didn’t have to pay for it.
Cameron Croft:
If you’re on the presentation today, the webinar today, please give us the feedback. Again, I’m black belt six sigma. I love data, I love continuous improvement. Let us know how it’d be better fit to tailor your needs and what you’re looking for.
Cameron Croft:
This is a part of the Q and A section. Again, if you’re on it, if you’ve got specific questions about maybe you have existing equipment that you’re trying to alter, this is a great time to tap into Jessie’s knowledge. We do have two loaded questions I have for you Jessie. But then again on that is if you are looking for the equipment inspection form, do let us know about that so that way we can shift that over to you. This is a form that Osynergy uses to monitor what they’re doing and the integrity of their systems.
Cameron Croft:
Right now I’ve got one question for you, Jessie, that came pre-loaded. A person has a two-phase separator, but they honestly need a three-phase separator. Is it even worth it to convert it to a three-phase? Or would it be … it’s easier to go from three-phase to two-phase, that’s just a level control. But going from a two-phase to three-phase, is it worth it to convert it, or buy new or a used one?
Jessie:
Well the first thing I would ask is what size is it. For the most part, the general answer would be yes it’s worth it. For the most part you do have to remove the head, then you have to [inaudible 00:48:57] in and your additional nozzles to be able to convert it into a three phase. But one of the first things you want to know is what size is it. If it’s a very small one, then maybe it’s borderline. But anything above 30 inch, absolutely. Even 24 inch, absolutely. Plus it’s going to save you time. Unless somebody’s trying to get rid of equipment for cheap, then you might want to evaluate that.
Cameron Croft:
That’s absolutely true. They didn’t go into specifics on it. The other question they had was they moved a contact tower to a new location and it looks like the bubble caps that are in there, that they increased the velocity through them. Because they’re not making good bubbling through the inspection ports, how hard would it be to go in there and redo the bubble caps on that existing contact tower?
Jessie:
Well again, it would depend on size. But basically, if it was a pretty large contact tower, you would have a and you’re able to go through and remove them. But if it’s a smaller one, you would have to cut the head and start pulling out the trays and putting new trays in there. You know everything is doable. In this case, it’s almost worth it because you’re going to be saving on having to buy a new tower.
Cameron Croft:
Awesome. Well, we don’t have any further questions right now, but that doesn’t mean that questions aren’t going to come in. We have our LinkedIn contacts below. If you have any questions that come after as you start driving, that’s when the big questions always hit me, do reach out to Jessie. He is a great resource to have. If you want Croft to handle with our engineering firm, mostly we’re going to be partnering up with Jessie on the future projects anyways, but reach out to both of us. We’re here for you. Jessie, I definitely appreciate you coming and talking with us today.
Jessie:
Thank you for having me.
Cameron Croft:
All right, we’re going to end the webinar here, so everyone get to lunch. Thank you again, Jessie.
Jessie:
Thanks.
